Monday, February 8, 2016

Fifty Years of IRBs

As has been widely not reported, today marks the fiftieth anniversary the issuance of U.S. Public Health Service Policy and Procedure Order (PPO) #129, which mandated that each recipient of a PHS grant involving human beings secure prior review by “a committee of his institutional associates.” From this document flowed all subsequent IRB policies, in the United States and in several other countries.


To honor the occasion, I have posted a PDF of the order on my page of IRB documents.


(Not really. A correspondent was looking for a copy, and I posted it for her.)